


the flood

by cirque



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Far Future, Plague, Post-Apocalypse, Religion, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23176189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: The stars were full of humans, now, in great glowy ships, seeding people throughout galaxies hence.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	the flood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tentacledicks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/gifts).



> I wrote this before Coronavirus became a thing and... it did not age well. Ah well....

They had worshipped the prophets for millenia, even before the Flood. They worshipped the prophets from the sky, still, even hundreds of lightyears from Earth. The story went that they had taken the oldest holy books with them, to put them in good stead with the gods on whose territory they were encroaching. The stars were full of humans, now, in great glowy ships, seeding people throughout galaxies hence. 

It was for these ships that Iva searched, fruitlessly, beyond the curve of the horizon. The stars were beautiful tonight.  Hercules was looking down, about to strike the serpent. Iva looked up into the clear sky, dark blue and lined with halos of starlight in the early evening. It would be dark soon. She turned her back on the constellations and watched Venus tracking its way across the horizon. Satisfied in their permanence, she sent up a prayer to the ancestors; she did not want them to think she had forgotten them.

It was high summer, and stuffy even now. She shrugged out of her cardigan and let it fall into the grass at her feet. Everything was still, the village silent. The funeral would begin soon.

Aphros approached her from behind, and she startled at his appearance.

“Well met,” he said, and saluted her. She giggled at the formality. He was funny like that.

“Well met,” Iva echoed. “I was just looking at the stars.”

“See anything interesting?”

She pointed up and up. “The Polestar.” Vega winked down at them, and Iva closed her eyes, feeling her pulse thrum. She loved nothing more than being out in the empty, cloudless night. She could not imagine the before-times, where the pollution was layered up good and thick in the atmosphere, blocking out the Milky Way. Now it shone as it should, bright against the black.

Aphros shivered. “Come back inside? We’re about to start.”

“I will,” Iva said, “I’m just convening with the ancestors.” She looked beyond the constellations, beyond Vega, and into one of the many unfixed points of the night sky. If she looked hard enough, she could even imagine them moving. She knew that in truth they moved too slow to see without the use of a telescope. A hundred-some lightyears away they were out there, streaking across the sky.

“‘Convening’ is it?” Aphros raised his eyebrow at her. He was the sort to poke fun.

Iva finally tore her eyes from the sky. She faced her uncle and let him take her arm. She was ready. “I just like to pretend they’re out there, looking back.”

“You’d have fit in with the travelers. You’ve got that look.”

Iva frowned. “What look?”

“ _ Adventure _ .”

Iva shrugged at this. She would have loved to have been born upon one of the generation ships leading the exodus from Earth. The mystery of it all… but it did no good to wonder; she had been born on Earth itself, in the very same village that she had spent all of her days, in the very same village that her grandfather had spent all  _ his _ days, before he died. He had prayed to the same gods, but it made no difference in the end. The sickness came for him, as it came for everyone in the end.

Iva and her uncle began to walk back over the dried-out grass, towards the village proper. They reached the path, and crunched glass beneath their boots. Over time, their predecessors had trod a floor so full of broken glass it turned to gravel. The different colours filtered together in a rainbow, compacted into the dry earth. It was this path that they took, walking companionably to the golden arches of the community centre. The door was open, emitting light from a thousand candles.

“Well met,” whispered her cousin on the door. She handed them fragrant sage sticks, lit at one end. The smoke followed them as they approached the front benches. Ahead of them, at the far end of the room, was Iva’s grandfather’s coffin, hewn from oakwood. It was covered in a white blanket crocheted by Iva and the rest of them. There were candles all around, and Iva could smell mint and chamomile. There were flowers everywhere. She lowered her head in respect as they approached. The watchers, his eldest son and Iva’s cousin, had been there since he died, guarding the body.

Aphros moved to sit beside his wife, and Iva sat beside him. Her sage stick burnt out and she placed it on the bench next to her. The places were really starting to fill up now; Iva’s grandfather had been well-loved. Iva recognised everyone: Endry the miller and his children, farmer Davin who had once caught Iva and her friends playing in his cabbages. She nodded curtly to the school teachers, and the builders that had worked with her grandfather, and the councilmen who had looks of grim acceptance on their faces. 

“Good turn out,” whispered Aphros, and Iva said  _ hmm _ in response. It  _ was _ a good turn out, but this was no surprise. Everyone knew everyone in the village, after all. It was hard not to make friends.

Iva remembered nothing but the community. She did not remember her mother, who had succumbed to the Sickness when she was but a baby, nor did she remember her father, who had gone out walking in the sludgy desert of London some ten years ago. She remembered nothing but her uncle’s loving arms and, most sweetly, her grandfather’s stories.

He had a story for everything, did Iva’s grandfather. They were still telling the stories even now, as they took their places before his shiny coffin.

“He’d have been pleased,” said Iva’s aunt, and Iva rankled a little.  _ Pleased? _ He would have been pleased to have a few more years of life; would have been pleased not to spend his dying hours coughing up his own lungs. The sickness was everywhere; long ago had people given up on hiding from it. If it didn’t kill you the first time around, it certainly would the second time. Iva’s grandfather had survived two bouts before this last one. He was strong to the end.

The Sickness began as a cough, and ended as spurts of bright red blood hacked up from the back of your throat. In the before-times there had been hospitals, and doctors to staff them, but those were all long-since closed down and looted bare of supplies. Bandages were currency now, and the only medicines were herbal. You could die from an infected cut, never mind the Sickness.

The Flood came later, a second insult to humanity’s memory. The water surged from melted ice caps and buried much of the continents. South America succumbed, as did Australia. England, and Iva’s village, being on the North-East edge, was mostly saved from the devastation of the South. London disappeared overnight, lost in a tsunami so great they sang songs about it. 

But that was all centuries ago, millenia even. The world moved on, whether it wanted to or not. People were born and then they died, all in the wake of disaster. And still the generation ships thrummed onwards, searching for a new home in the sky.

“Iva, look-” Aphros pointed to the entrance. Iva craned her neck to see, through the ocean of her collected family members.

The preacher was entering the community centre. He wore all white, as was tradition, except for the black  kippah. He had medals on his chest, perhaps handed down from the before times, or perhaps they were stolen. Iva could not be sure. The preacher moved on bare feet at this most holy of times. He carried a burning candle and was reciting prayers.

“O God, forgive him and give him the steadiness to say the right thing,” he said, to the room at large. His voice echoed off the polished white tiles. “ _ Assalaamu ‘alaykum warahmatullah. _ ”

They echoed the prayer. Iva’s voice shook; suddenly it all felt too real. 

“O God, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present among us and those who are absent, in the skies or in heaven, our young and our old, our men and women. O God, whoever You keep alive, keep him alive in good faith, and whoever You cause to die, cause him to die with faith, though the Sickness takes its toll. O God, do not deprive us of the reward and do not cause us to go astray after this. O God, forgive him and have mercy on him, keep him safe and sound and forgive him, honor his rest and ease his entrance; wash him with water and snow and hail, and cleanse him of sin as a white garment is cleansed of dirt. O God, give him a home better than his home and a family better than his family. O God, admit him to the Kingdom of Heaven, and protect him from the torment of the grave and the torment of Hell-fire; make his grave spacious and fill it with light."

“Amen,” Iva said along with the rest of them. 

Her uncles stood up and approached the shrouded coffin. They were all of them barefoot, their pale feet sticking to the tiled floor with little beads of sweat. They lifted the coffin up onto their shoulders and made their faltering way outside. Iva’s grandfather had not been a small man, but her uncles were strong; you had to be to live in these times.

Outside, they lowered the coffin into the hole they had dug earlier. Iva and the others crowded around. “ _ Assalaamu ‘alaykum warahmatullah, _ ” said the preacher again, and again the congregation echoed it. The words sounded as though they were coming from all around, so many of them were there.

Each of Iva’s family members approached the hole and threw in a handful of dirt from the waiting pile. Iva herself took a pale pink rose head, and dropped it onto the place where her grandfather’s heart lay.

“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord the Prophet and the Pilgrim, we commend to Almighty God our brother Gethin, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious to him, the Lord lift up his countenance upon him and give him peace.  _ Amen _ .”

“Amen,” whispered Iva, and the tears flew free.

It was a beautiful service. Everyone joined hands and someone in the back sang one of Iva’s grandfather’s more popular songs, the story of the turtle and the rabbit. It was odd, Iva thought, to be standing there while the pallbearers covered her grandfather in earth, thick red soil heavy with clay. There were little speckles of glass in it, too, which made her think again of the stars. 

Was her grandfather’s spirit out there with the ships? Was he singing in the night sky? Would he come back to them, at the end of days? Iva did not know what to think; the world had already ended twice, and there had been no rapture.

She drew in a deep breath, for strength. She needed to be strong. Life would go on; it always did. She looked back to the community centre, its doors open wide, welcoming. It would be time for the wake soon and then  _ shiva _ , a week in which they told each other all the best stories from Iva’s grandfather’s life. And, she smiled, there were so many wonderful stories.


End file.
